Zeppo

Reviewed by Steven H Silver

His name has become synonymous with mediocrity and he appeared on screen for less than an hour across five films and a short. He was reluctantly forced to join his brother's Vaudeville act and quit the comedy team as soon as he was able. To many Zeppo Marx is not even an enigma, he is merely background to the Marx Brothers. Although not as well known as his more famous brothers, who went on to make several more films without him, Zeppo Marx had a successful life in nearly everything he did after leaving his brothers behind. Robert S. Bader, who focused on the Marx Brothers' stage career in Four of the Three Musketeers and who helped bring Susan Marx's biography, Speaking of Harpo to publication, has now turned his attention to the second most enigmatic Marx Brother, Zeppo.

Born eight years after his brother Gummo and 11 years after his most famous brother, Groucho, Herbert Marx had no desire to follow in his brothers' footsteps. While Chico, Harpo, Groucho, and Gummo were touring Vaudeville as the Four Marx Brothers, Herbert, who would eventually be nicknamed Zeppo, grew up on the streets of Chicago, ditching school, getting into fights, and engaging in crimes with his friends, ranging from stiffing restaurateurs to stealing cars. Eventually getting a job working for Ford Motors, it was clear to his mother, Minnie, that if she couldn't see Zeppo on the stage with his brothers, she would see him in prison and she worked to create a role for him, first with other acts and later as a replacement for Gummo, who left the act to enlist in the army during World War I. Those early years, however, were indicative of who Zeppo would eventually become.

Bader traces Zeppo's role in his brothers' act, noting that he was never a partner, always an employee, something which would chafe on him, especially as writer after writer couldn't figure out what to do with the fourth brother, even if Zeppo proved himself more capable than Gummo had been. From almost the moment he joined the act, he tried to figure out how to leave it, eventually departing after their contract with Paramount expired following Duck Soup in 1933. Although they might be the end of his high profile job, it is only the start of his success in business.

After leaving the act, Zeppo opened a talent agency, which he stuck with long enough to become wealthy before he turned his attention to other pursuits, including running a restaurant, creating a manufacturing company, and getting involved in dog and horse breeding. The life Bader presents is one in which the need to prove himself successful, while being beholden to nobody, was an overriding obsession. Once the employee of his brothers, he never wanted to work for someone else. While his oldest brother, Chico, was an inveterate gambler, who had a tendency to lose, Zeppo was just as obsessive a gambler, but he understood the odds better than Chico and knew how to play to win, which was important because his role in business, gambling, and other aspects of his life constantly brought him into contact with gamblers and gangsters. Zeppo was luckier than his friends from his youth, many of whom wound up dead or in prison. At the same time, many of those he associated with as an adult faces the same fate as his boyhood friends.

Zeppo wasn't successful in everything he tried. Although he had two lengthy marriages, first with Marion Benda (1927-1954) and later to Barbara Blakeley (1959-1973). With Benda, he eventually adopted two sons, Tom and Tim, and proved that being a father was another area in which he did not excel. Bader notes that both boys broke off their relationship with their father, with Tim not seeing his father for the last 12 years of Zeppo's life and Tom cutting off his connection even earlier. Zeppo also adopted Blakely's son, Bobby, from her first marriage to Robert Oliver, and although he appeared to be a better father to Bobby, Bader gives indications that his relationship with Bobby was calculated to enhance his own relationship with Blakely, which eventually ended in their divorce.

Bader presents a more complete exploration of Zeppo Marx than has previously existed. Showing that the enigmatic shadow on the screen was a driven individual who achieved success in a variety of areas, but at the expense of his personal life. His relationships with his wives and adopted sons were not successful and in many ways Zeppo never outgrew the street thug mentality that he embraced as a young boy, merely hiding it behind a veneer of respectability that he was able to obtain in large part due to his association with his brothers' act.

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